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Hope for new policy to ease Gympie flood insurance premiums

Gympie MP David Gibson says a new policy to reduce insurance premiums in flood-affected regions should be in place by Christmas.

The Queensland Government plan involves giving insurers more detailed maps so non-flood prone properties are not charged inflated premiums.

Mr Gibson says some Gympie residents have seen their insurance premiums double because of repeated flooding in the region.

"It's very easy when you're sitting in a glass tower office building in Sydney to be making decisions about insurance premiums that play out in Mary Street in Gympie but you need to really understand what is the impact of that," he said.

"Some of the anecdotal evidence from pensioners who've come in to show us is we've seen in the vicinity of [a] 50 to 100 per cent increase in premiums."

Mr Gibson says one of the problems is that properties are not being assessed on a case-by-case basis.

"Insurance companies using postcodes to determine the risk profile for an area, rather than actually drilling down into specific locations," he said.

"For example, treating all of Gympie 4570 as being high risk, when we know for a fact that much of Gympie doesn't flood and isn't flood-affected and those areas shouldn't be treated with the same risk profile."